Sociology Commons^™

A Critical Assessment Of The Internship At The Ngo Committee On The Status Of Women, New York, Ching-Kang Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone research project is the critical assessment of my internship paper at the The NGO Committee on the Status of Women, New York (NGO CSW/NY), which documents my experience of working from September, 2017 to December 2017. Part one focuses on the analysis and observation on LGBTQ human rights work at the United Nations. Part two records my work and experiences at the NGO CSW/NY, including the UNGA Gender Mapping Project and UN meetings. Part three is my observations and reflections upon the half-year internship experience, which serve as reference for people who intend to do NGO advocacy work …

Out Of The Shadows: Women Of The Fmln Guerrilla Army In El Salvador’S Civil War, 1979–1992, Erica Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of a century, revolutionary movements have emerged every few years across the region of Central America, movements that fought for overturning dictatorships and confronting socio-economic inequalities. Women experience higher levels of poverty, human rights violations and discrimination due to gender inequalities. Representing 30% of the FMLN guerrilla army, women in El Salvador took a quantum leap into one of the most horrific and violent armed conflicts in the history of the country (Montgomery 123). Theorists have sought to explain why women became involved in the war. Experts of insurgent collective action agree that women's participation played a …

Out-Group Threat Or Inter-Group Contact Theory? Out-Group Attitudes And Interaction In Times Of Diversity Growth, Annette Jacoby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Much attention has been devoted to the presumed negative effect of diversity growth on various dimensions of attitudes and interaction between different racial and ethnic groups. However, whether the claims hold true is unclear- there is a considerable controversy over the impact of changing diversity on societal behavior. With ongoing migration, the United States are becoming more and more ethnically diverse but a sound debate on racial and ethnic composition and its consequences for inter-group interactions and attitudes towards others has not yet been possible due to a lack of causally-oriented panel studies.

In this study, two important features are …

The State Of Hate In America: A Study Of Hate Group Permeation In The United States By State, Michelle Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze some of the statistics regarding hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has studied hate groups in the United States in depth for decades, developing tools and providing some useful statistics. They have developed a hate map that describes the quantity of hate groups in America individually by state and helps specifically identify trends in year over year comparisons. However, the hate map does not offer per capita breakdowns for a state or reasons for hate group permeation unique to the demographics and culture of each state. Factors and elements in conjunction with the hate …

Still Life: Growing Up With Death - A Visual Memoir, Lindsey Roth-Rosen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a multidimensional visual narrative project that incorporates heuristic methodology to illustrate complicated grief that emerged from early childhood loss. The memoir’s intention is to exemplify grief as a complex and mutable composite response to the death of my mother. One objective of this capstone is to understand melancholy, commonly associated with mental illness or symptomatic of depression, as an aesthetic emotion as well as a conduit for philosophical reflection. I use non-verbal approaches to the genre of a memoir by incorporating my photography to epitomize art as a powerful means to comprehend the totality of loss: as …

Pipeline To Failure: Social Inequality And The False Promises Of American Public Schooling, Adia Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My experience as a New York City public school student was absolutely electrifying, though filled with many trials. While my mother would have preferred to put me in private school, having access to some of the world’s greatest institutions and resources offered unique opportunities and exposures. The performing arts provided me with an outlet to express myself and build skills and confidence. In particular, dance education kept me occupied and disciplined in a large city full of danger. Every so often, I witnessed hostile, or even violent exchanges between students, or students and staff. While some of my schoolmates became …

An Analysis Of Successful And Unsuccessful Terrorist Assassinations: Informing Counterterrorism Through Situational Crime Prevention, Marissa Mandala

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study applies environmental criminology and situational crime prevention (SCP) to study successful and unsuccessful assassinations by terrorists. Using these perspectives, a series of hypotheses were devised to understand the situational factors that contribute to successful compared to unsuccessful assassinations. A random sample of roughly 1,000 successful and 1,000 unsuccessful assassination attacks taking place between 2005 and 2014 was acquired from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Open source materials were then consulted to supplement the GTD with the creation of new SCP variables. The hypotheses were tested in a binary logistic regression, and additional regression models were created for 4 …

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …

Embody: The Transformation Of Intimate Knowledges Through Generations In Liberal Societies, Lisa Kronberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis project aims to examine how intimate knowledges[1] are transferred and communicated between generations in Western, liberal societies. By ‘Intimate knowledges’ I mean to encompass diverse knowledge of emotional intelligence, sexual identity, and gender.

Intimate knowledges evolve with human life circle everywhere and at all times, but in Western popular discourse of today, are treated with confusion and repression; they thus emerge as a “loud display of simultaneously silent sexual desire.” (Fine and McClelland, 2006) I explore this tension through a critical, feminist lens that sheds light on the ways in which political economy creates cultural norms that …

Military Citizenship In The Post-9/11 Homefront, Estefania Ponti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In discussion with the literature on the treatment of veterans in the United States and the nature of American citizenship ideology, the following dissertation asks how post-9/11 veterans are defining, (re)creating, and contesting citizenship in the contemporary U.S. By studying a localized community of post-9/11 veterans, my dissertation highlights the dilemmas of U.S. citizenship at a time when the U.S. is engaged in a global War on Terror using less than 1% of the U.S. population as paid volunteers. Soldiers and veterans occupy states and spaces of exception, marking military citizens as distinct from civilians. Military citizenship benefits the nation …

Conditions Of Personhood And Property, Zachary James Acree

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to demonstrate that a more robust understanding of personhood both reveals flaws in the underlying assumptions of modern property law, and orients that law to a more just application. To do this, the law needs not only a better definition of what persons are, but also a better understanding of how persons function in their society. First, in order to provide some context to the issues at stake, there is a brief historical introduction to some of the problems that personhood inquiries have faced. After the introduction, this paper is divided into four sections. Part I summarizes …

Exploring The Roots Of Chronic Underdevelopment: The Colonial Encomienda And Resguardo And Their Legacy To Modern Colombia, Pedro Bossio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Colombian society has been historically marked by socioeconomic inequality, restricted social mobility, and institutional weakness. In order to understand the reasons for the country´s continuous struggle to achieve inclusive economic progress and stability since its independence from Spain in 1819, it is necessary to understand its colonial history. Central to this were the two most important colonial economic institutions, the encomienda and the resguardo, both designed for the exploitation of unfree Indian labor. Even when these were slowly replaced by more modern haciendas worked by free farm workers, the economic and political life of the country continued to be …

Female Autistic Perspectives: Limits In Diagnosis And Understanding, Alexandra Helmers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder has increased dramatically within the last two decades, with males being diagnosed, on average, four to five times more than females. Although researchers in the medical community have searched for a biological explanation for this discrepancy, no definitive cause has been found. I argue that our understanding of autism is primarily a social and cultural construction, in addition to a diagnosable medical disorder. The gender disparity in diagnosis reflects cultural narratives surrounding social interaction and the widespread belief in two distinct gender roles. Furthermore, narratives surrounding the topic of autism tend to unintentionally highlight …

The Production Of Space: Indigenous Resistance Movements In The Peruvian Amazon, Christian Calienes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The resistance movement that resulted in the Baguazo in the northern Peruvian Amazon in 2009 was the culmination of a series of social, economic, political and spatial processes that reflected the Peruvian nation’s engagement with global capitalism and democratic consolidation after decades of crippling instability and chaos. The recently discovered oil and natural gas reserves that occupy the subsoil of much the Peruvian Amazon provide the latest natural resource upon which the national project can continue to be implemented. In a context of neo-imperialism and neo-extractivism where through accumulation by dispossession, new markets are introduced into global capitalist structures after …

Contemporary Archaeological Looting: A Criminological Analysis Of Italian Tomb Robbers, Marc Balcells Magrans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Looters (in Italian, tombaroli), whether underground or underwater, have preyed on the Italian archaeology for centuries. The literature on both archaeological looting and, more specifically, the Italian case, has been widely developed by other disciplines, mostly archaeology. In spite of this body of literature, the number of studies discussing issues related to tombaroli is minimal, and the criminological contribution is nonexistent. After examining important gaps in the literature, this study explains the nature of the relationship between tombaroli and organized crime and how organized criminals learn and adapt during their careers. These topics have been both misrepresented and sporadically …

Essays On Economics Of Inequality, Aboozar Hadavand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters all around the subject of inequality. The first chapter provides a novel analysis of the trend in income inequality in the United States between 1979--2013. There are two ways in which this chapter contributes to the literature. First, I analyze how much of the existing inequality in the U.S. is due to the demographic changes that happened over this period. Using microdata from Luxembourg Income Study and after decomposing inequality into within- and between-age group components, I find that the within-group share of overall inequality in the U.S. is high and steady compared to …

Preventing Sexual Violence Where It Most Often Occurs: An Investigation Of The Situational And Structural Components Of Child Sexual Abuse In Residential Settings, Nicole Colombino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given that sex offenders tend to perpetrate crimes against people they know (e.g., Greenfield, 1997) and first encounter victims in residential locations (Colombino, Mercado, Levenson, & Jeglic, 2011), it is important that research examine the circumstances of sexual offenses within residential settings. Although previous research has examined the perpetration patterns of sexual offenses against children, especially related to grooming tactics (e.g., Conte, Wolf, & Smith, 1989) and situational factors (e.g., Wortley & Smallbone, 2006), there are few studies that specifically examine the correlates of child sexual abuse within residential settings. This type of data would allow for the development of …

Patriarchy And Varieties Of Violence Against Women: A Contextual Analysis, Margaret Schmuhl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Violence against women (VAW) is a widespread social problem affecting nearly two million women in the United States each year (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). In recent years, feminist criminologists have called for the ‘resurrection’ of patriarchy as a theoretical explanation of VAW women (Hunnicutt, 2009) suggesting that the prior literature’s focus on gender inequality in social institutions must be broadened to include patriarchy’s ideological element. The empirical literature on VAW mostly examines the effects of gender inequality on rape and femicide often neglecting more common forms of violence that women experience. In addition, while there are some exceptions, this literature …

Hatred Simmering In The Melting Pot: Hate Crime In New York City, 1995-2010, Colleen E. Mills

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hate crime proves prevalent in American society, inflicting a variety of harms on victims as well as society at large. Scholars have long sought to understand the motivations and conditions behind hate crime offending. Green and his colleagues conducted the classic neighborhood studies examining the conditions that foster hate crime (Green, Glaser, & Rich, 1998; Green, Strolovich, & Wong, 1998; Green, Strolovitch, Wong, & Bailey). Using data from the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, the current study replicates and extends Green's neighborhood studies by investigating hate crime in New York City from 1995 to 2010. This study …

Aesthetic Geographies: Art, Crises, Urban Imaginaries, Erin Siodmak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Performance art, with its origins in Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism, has long been a political, politicized, and transgressive form of art, posing challenges to art world institutions, political and social norms, and the nature of art itself through practitioners’ unconventional uses of the body, space, and audience/viewer participation. Much of the power of performed art comes from its performative and transitory nature: it does not simply express, represent, or communicate information. Rather, performative art forms such as installation or performance are productive of political aesthetics. Art may not necessarily intervene directly with political, legal, and legislative decisions or acts, but …

The Behavioral Effects Divorce Can Have On Children, Wanda M. Williams-Owens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

According to a statistical study (Cherlin et al. 1991) 40% of children who live in the United States will experience parental divorce before they reach the age of 18. Consequently, many children are affected by the process of divorce and its finalization. When my daughter was just nine years old, she asked incredulously why my husband and I were the only married couple in our neighborhood? After twenty-two years of marriage, I realized long-term marriages in my community are not conventional. When parents’ divorce, children often face the loss of one parent's constant presence and economic stability; as a result, …

Trump’S “America First” Trade Policy And The Politics Of U.S. International Investment Agreements, Jesse Liss

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous sociological studies on U.S. trade policy institutions concluded that “free trade” political actors had durable power to determine U.S. trade policy. This conclusion was proven wrong when the Trump administration promised “a new direction” and to implement an “America First” trade policy. My dissertation serves to explain the U.S.’ political transition away from “free trade” and towards “nationalist” trade policy. I do this by examining the politics of U.S. international investment agreements, which are central to U.S. trade policy. As case studies, I use the investment agreements from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership …

Walking As Ontological Shifter: Thoughts In The Key Of Life, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With walking as ontological shifter I pursue an alternative to the dominant modernist episteme that offers either/or onto-epistemologies of opposition and their reifying engagements. I propose this type of walking is an intentional turning towards a set of radical positions that, as integrative aesthetic and therapeutic practice, brings multiplicity and synchronicity to experience and being in an expanded sociality. This practice facilitates the conditions of possibility for recurring points of contact between the interiority perceived as ‘body’ and the exteriority perceived as ‘world.’ While making evident the self’s at once incoherence with it-self, it opens to a space beyond the …

Mapping How Culture In New York City And London Influences Respectively The Iconic Fashion Brands Of Kors And Mcqueen: A Case Study, Carol Brathwaite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is an explanatory case study that applies geographic information systems (GIS) data, biographical data, and other secondary data. It includes mainly qualitative data collection and analysis; furthermore, the study examines quantitative data on the cultural events offered within each city. Overall, this case study adopts a theoretical perspective. The two individual cases (based on a multiple, holistic case-study design framework) of fashion culture in New York City and London, as per Michael Kors and Alexander McQueen respectively, represent ‘confirmatory cases or presumed replications of the same phenomenon’ (Yin 2014:59). Each describes the house’s fashion aesthetics as well as …

From Targets To Agents: Women's Perceptions Of Their Vulnerability And The Strategies They Use To Resist, Alexis Halkovic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Women in the U.S. are sexually victimized at high rates and are socialized to believe they are unable to defend themselves. While there is ample evidence that women can successfully fight off assailants using physical force (Clay-Warner, 2002; Ullman, 2007), women’s self-defense training initiatives are not funded by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) or any national anti-violence organizations (Carlson, 2014). The NRA, on the other hand, tailors programs to instruct women to use guns for self-defense leaving them as the only national organization promoting women’s right to defend themselves (Carlson, 2014). This project interrogates how women think about their …

Never Forgets: Traumatic Trace Within Public Space, Jan Descartes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will interrogate the ways in which ephemera from events affects the human and non- human environment and how the absence, manipulation or presence of traumatic trace weaves itself into the atmosphere of the past, present and future. It will look at space and the ways that trace manifests itself in hierarchal spaces and Lebbeus Woods’ concept of heterarchial spaces, which are organic and/or horizontally organized. A thread throughout is the question that if trace from trauma can exist in the visual field, i.e. the physical or digital landscape, in a way that maintains a discourse without perpetuating oppression. …

The Politics Of Shorter Hours And Corporate-Centered Society: A History Of Work-Time Regulation In The United States And Japan, Keisuke Jinno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shorter working hours drew much attention as a means of fighting unemployment and crisis in capitalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, shorter work-time is rarely considered a policy option to fix economic or social issues in the United States and Japan. This dissertation presents a history of work-time regulation in the United States and Japan to examine how and why its developments and stalemate took place.

In the big picture, developments of work-time regulation during the first half of the twentieth century were a part of concessional modifications of class relations, a common phenomenon in many …

The Queer Allure Of Digital Sociality, Benjamin Parrish Haber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the resonance between queer sociality and emergent forms of digital communication. Drawing from queer theory and LGBTQ social histories, this dissertation charts the convergence of digital social modulation with the polyvalence, promiscuity, and mutability of queer sociality. A close analysis of the infrastructure and design of Facebook, Snapchat, Grindr, and other queered social media platforms demonstrates how digital capitalism’s desire for lifelong compulsive engagement is in part facilitated by an appropriation of the ongoingness of queer sexuality and relationality. In highlighting the key role of temporality, aesthetic, and affect in regulating the creation and circulation of digital …

Bodies Of Knowledge: An Anatomy And Kinesiology Of The American Prison Nation, 'Human'-Making, And Twenty-First-Century Techno-Gods, Lyndsey Karr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The social production of hegemonic knowledge has historically been legitimized in relation to the sanctioned status of the ‘Human’.[1] Beginning with the American Prison Industrial Complex and what sociologist Beth E. Richie conceptualizes as the “prison nation,” I will show the ‘human’ as a contingent and composite status appearing along a spectrum of Flesh, Body, and ‘Human’ (Flesh-Body-‘Human’) statuses and subjectivity.

Bringing this ‘Human’ continuum into conversation with twenty-first-century media, (micro)computational technologies, and contemporary knowledge and social economies, I expand the notion, reach, and scale of the American “prison nation.” Following Mark Hansen’s treatment of twenty-first-century digital media, I …

Genealogy Of The Concept Of "Hate Crime": The Cultural Implications Of Legal Innovation And Social Change, Roslyn Myers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The term "hate crime" is new to legislative and public discourse, as well as legal and social science scholarship. A decade after the concept of a "hate crime" was introduced in Congress, the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA), to punish criminal actors who target victims because of their characteristics (race, color ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, gender, gender identity, or disability). Using relevant archival sources, this project uses genealogical qualitative methods to examine the interplay of cultural elements manifested in this provocative term, which reflect dominance and subjugation among social groups (In- and Out-Groups) …